The Zeus Blog: Application Delivery, Cloud Computing, Load Balancing, Virtualization

CSTechcast Podcast with Owen Garrett: Making the Cloud Perform

For those of you who have not come across the guys at CSTechcast.com before, they class themselves as an information technology podcast network for IT professionals and are based in Colorado Springs, US. A technology focused podcast is released every Monday, and is hosted by Eric Johnson, Eric Beehler, Josh Jones and Dana Warren. Each week they discuss the latest in technology trends and technology news and interviews with key members of the IT community.

In the most recent edition (released on Monday of this week) Owen from Zeus had the pleasure of chatting with Eric Beehler on the subject of how to make your applications perform and scale in the Cloud. Owen and Eric touch on a number of other subjects around this topic including; is cost the only driver for organizations looking to use Cloud services? Owen argues not, and puts a good case forward for the drivers of agility and low risk. The full podcast can be viewed below and lasts approx 40 minutes with Owen's and Eric's conversation about 13 minutes in.

Mark Gyles

Zeus Podcast - Application Delivery: What are my load balancing options?

This week's edition focusses on the sorts of options that are open to you when looking at using an application delivery controller to perform load balancing. You can listen to the podcast in .mp3 format by clicking on the link below.

Hosts: Mark Gyles, Nick Bond

Download: Application Delivery: What are my load balancing options?

Nick and Mark discuss how 'simple' load balancing became the foundation of application traffic management (aka by Gartner as Application Delivery Controllers) as we know them today. Nick gives an overview of the origins, functionality and evolution of load balancing and application delivery. He continues by explaining how the Zeus solution adds real intelligence to the way application traffic is load balanced and managed using scripting langauges such as TrafficScript.

He concludes by discussing the differences between using custom hardware Application Delivery Controller appliances and the options that are available in terms of deploying SoftADC's (Zeus Traffic Manager) on commodity hardware.

We would like to hear from listeners who may have topic suggestions that they would like to see offered in the podcast format. Please email: blog(at)zeus.com with your suggestions or any other feedback you may have once having listened to this podcast.

Mark Gyles

Zeus Podcast - Taking advantage of the Zeus ZXTM Development License Program

Welcome to the second in the series of podcasts run by the team at Zeus. This week's edition focuses on the release of the Zeus ZXTM Development License program, who can take advantage of this and why they would wish to. You can listen to the podcast in .mp3 format by clicking on the link below.

Hosts: Mark Gyles, Owen Garrett

Download: Podcast - Zeus ZXTM Development License Program

For those of you who are not entirely familiar with the Zeus offering, Owen Garrett gives a quick overview of why organisations look at software application traffic managers to help solve the challenges of availability and scalability of large web-based applications.

Zeus is leading the way in which people can develop applications by removing the 'old world' barriers to the way people view traffic management and web application development. As Web2.0, social networking and Cloud Computing gain greater traction and require fast time-to-market, developers need to create services quickly and reliably while meeting the demand for performance, scalability and availability.

The powerful 'application-fluent' capabilities of modern ADCs like ZXTM are invaluable to developers seeking to build high-performance, highly-scalable web applications.  Zero-cost ZXTM Development Licenses allow an organization to deploy as many ZXTMs as they require for non-production purposes, such as training, development, testing and proof-of-concept projects. Any application developer can build and test their applications using ZXTM on any platform.

We would like to hear from listeners who may have topic suggestions that they would like to see offered in the podcast format. Please email: blog(at)zeus.com with your suggestions or any other feedback you may have once having listened to this podcast.

Mark Gyles

Zeus Podcast - How can you make your web applications more secure from malicious attacks

Welcome to the first in a series of podcasts run by the team here at Zeus. This week's edition focuses on the recently launched Zeus Application Firewall Module (ZXTM AFM), with an introduction to the solution and how it can be deployed in conjunction with ZXTM. You can listen to the podcast in .mp3 format by clicking on the link below.

Hosts: Mark Gyles, Owen Garrett

Download: Zeus Podcast ZXTM Application Firewall Module

Why do you need a web application firewall?

Many web-based applications are vulnerable to a range of attacks that cannot be protected against by traditional network firewalls. For example, cross site scripting, cookie tampering, forceful browsing and SQL injection attacks can be used to steal information and disrupt user's transactions, but because these attacks are hidden deep within the HTTP or HTTPS transactions, they are very difficult to detect and prevent.

Zeus has extended its offering by providing ZXTM AFM (ZXTM Application Firewall Module) which ensures business-critical applications are secure from the threat of malicious attacks and to protect online customers personal and financial information.

The ZXTM AFM solution is designed specifically to help organizations comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This is a global requirement that organizations who trade online must meet, regulating the processing, transmission and storage of credit card information.

ZXTM AFM helps organizations meet these requirements and can be easily configured with additional security policies to detect and prevent future attacks to your applications.

We would like to hear from listeners who may have topic suggestions that they would like to see offered in the podcast format. Please email: blog(at)zeus.com with your suggestions or any other feedback you may have once having listened to this podcast.

Mark Gyles